Parents who have been there helping others cope with loss

Tuesday

Apr 9, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 9, 2013 at 12:57 PM

At the time, Jill Althoff didn't realize how much she needed the teddy bear. A friend offered the gift 21/2 years ago at Dublin Methodist Hospital after Althoff and her husband, Tim, lost their first baby.

Michael Grossberg, For The Columbus Dispatch

At the time, Jill Althoff didn’t realize how much she needed the teddy bear.

A friend offered the gift 2 1/2 years ago at Dublin Methodist Hospital after Althoff and her husband, Tim, lost their first baby.

“It gave us something to hold and carry as we left the hospital,” said Mrs. Althoff, 31. “We were already leaving with broken hearts. Without that bear, it would have meant leaving with empty arms.”

It would have also meant not coming up with Carrying Tender Angels, the nonprofit that the couple established to help other people cope with similar losses — support they saw as lacking.

The program has provided more than 250 bears to central Ohio couples facing what they did in September 2010, when their son was stillborn.

“When you’re planning for a new child and lose it, you lose all your future hopes and dreams for your family,” said Mr. Althoff, 32. “This is a positive way to affect other people.”

Hospital leaders agree.

“It’s an awesome program,” said Sherrie Valentine, director of women’s health services and obstetrics at Dublin Methodist.“They made a silver lining out of a dark cloud. With perinatal loss, .?.?. some mothers go home and their arms will physically ache because they have nothing to hold. The teddy bears take that place.”

Through the Carrying Tender Angels group, grieving couples also receive a brochure about the organization and its website (www.carryingtenderangels.org).

A focus of both: to help them through the first year of grief.

“A lot of stuff we recommend helps the families not just days after but for weeks and months after,” Mrs. Althoff said. “Often, by the time you’ve let it in, everybody else has moved on and you feel left alone.”

Working first with Dublin Methodist and since late 2011 with the Mount Carmel hospitals, the program recently expanded to the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University.

Privacy rules forbid the couple from meeting other parents unless reached through the website, but the Althoffs regularly see Dublin nurses and Mount Carmel chaplains to provide the bears and brochures, whose costs are covered through donations and fundraisers (with $11,000 collected to date).

The couple chose the organization initials — CTA — in memory of son Collin Timothy Althoff.

“We tried to make CTA for everybody and connect to everyone’s child, not just ours,” Mrs. Althoff said. “That’s why we only include the initials, not his name.”

Danielle and Matt Crans received the first bear, on June?9, 2011, after losing son Madden at Dublin Methodist.

“It was very comforting for us,” said Mrs. Crans, who on March 11 gave birth to son Benjamin Vincent.

The group founders, she said, became a resource.“They’d already been through it, so they knew .?. ?. how to guide us.”

Having become parents to son Lukas on May 18, 2012, the Althoffs plan to continue their efforts for a long time.

“What we didn’t expect was that CTA would help us get through our own loss, too,” Mrs. Althoff said.

“There’s something very healing about being there for others — and for that we are grateful."

mgrossberg@dispatch.com

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